Supramental change is a far-off, distant acquisition

Conclusions from Sri Aurobindo Studies Jul 29, 2012

The complexity of the systems, and the order of magnitude of the inter-relationships take the issues far beyond the faculties of mind, even at their highest. When we add to this the complexity of opposing viewpoints, the diversity of opinions and dogmas that abound, we have a formula for gridlock.

Uncompromising Change of Consciousness is Required from Sri Aurobindo Studies 

The supramental transformation represents a radical change in consciousness, moving us out of the sphere of the Ignorance as embodied in Matter, Life and Mind, and into the sphere of the Knowledge, which has its source in the original Existence-Consciousness-Delight of Existence. There must be a reversal of viewpoint, a change of core perception that represents a 180 degree difference from the normal mental view.

For ages humans have awakened to the “sun rising in the east, and setting in the west”. This perception was the basis of the philosophical viewpoint that placed the earth at the center of the universe and had the sun rotating around it. At a certain point in our mental development we recognised that in fact, the sun is not rotating around the earth, but rather, it is the opposite that is truly taking place.

We can get a far glimpse of the kind of qualitative change that needs to occur in consciousness with this understanding, in order to recognise that the supramental consciousness, based in Oneness, Harmony and Unity must become the foundation of our experience.

For this to occur, it is not sufficient to have small, incremental modifications to the mental viewpoint. This approach cannot possibly usher in the kind of total reversal of consciousness required.

Sri Aurobindo points out “But the supreme Grace will act only in the conditions of the Light and the Truth; it will not act in conditions laid upon it by the Falsehood and the Ignorance. For if it were to yield to the demands of the Falsehood, it would defeat its own purpose.” Sri Aurobindo, The Mother, Chapter One, pg. 1

Divine Shakti Rejects Egoistic Demands from Sri Aurobindo Studies

Every force that acts in the universe operates under its own principle of action. The human mind, unable to see the larger principles at work, treats forces in many cases as if they are simply random and incomprehensible. Western scientists, following up on the alchemists of the past, began to search for physical principles that operate in the world and devised laws of physics by which they can predict physical forces at work. This was followed by biochemistry and chemistry. Psychologists and sociologists began to look for principles that guide the action of individuals and groups of individuals. Nowadays, it is fairly well agreed that each force acts according to its unique principle of action.

Sri Aurobindo extends our understanding of this factor in the realm of spiritual action as well. The supreme Supramental Force, the Divine Shakti, acts under its own impulsion according to its own light as an evolutionary and transformative force. Thus, it does not act when the vessel that wants to receive it is either unready or impure, and thus, prone to misuse of the force for purposes other than what is intended by it.

“If behind your devotion and surrender you make a cover for your desires, egoistic demands and vital insistences, if you put these things in place of the true aspiration or mix them with it and try to impose them on the Divine Shakti, then it is idle to invoke the divine Grace to transform you.”

“If you open yourself on one side or in one part to the Truth and on another side are constantly opening the gates to hostile forces, it is vain to expect taht the divine Grace will abide with you. You must keep the temple clean if you wish to instal there the living Presence.”

So long as there is a consciousness of the individual ego, the effort required is to tune oneself to the action and influence of the Divine Force to the exclusion of other forces, and thereby create a field in which that force can act without impediment to transform body, life and mind. Sri Aurobindo, The Mother, Chapter One, pp. 3-4

Comment on The elusive touch of the psychic being by Rick Lipschutz from Comments for IYSATM by Rick Lipschutz

Dear Mike, I feel the transformed consciousness to which Mother refers is the same or similar to what Sri Aurobindo describes in “The Synthesis of Yoga,” in the third paragraph of its unfinished 13th chapter “The Supermind and the Yoga of Works”: “One must first acquire an inner Yogic consciousness and replace it by our ordinary view of things; one must revolutionise the whole present build of our being. Next, we have to go still deeper, discover our veiled psychic entity and in its light and under its government psychicise our inner and outer parts, turn mind-nature, life-nature, body-nature and all our mental, vital, physical action and states and movements into a conscious instrumentation of the soul.” Acquiring the Yogic consciousness would precede the psychicization (notice how he seems to distinguish the two stages or realizations) and probably is needed for the psychic transformation to proceed. The context in the chapter is that he is warning us that “the supramental change” is a far-off, distant acquisition, and that attaining a Yogic consciousness and then proceeding through the psychic and spiritual transformations (he goes on to describe the spiritual transformation later in the passage) is prerequisite to any supramental change or transformation. It does seem that this inner Yogic consciousness, this revolution of the being, while not the same as any stage of the triple transformation, is the realization most necessary.

This material that Sandeep has written and put together on the psychic being is first-rate! Rick Lipschutz

Comment on ‘Realtime Synthesis’ and the Différance of the Body: Technocultural Studies in the Wake of Deconstruction by Mark Hansen by richi rich from Comments for Posthuman Destinies by richi rich

“This positive ontology of the human-technological system opens a new creative engagement to the critique of techno-capitalism in our times, an embodied experimentation which needs to be brought into the discursive frame of the IY. Such an engagement awaits a new languaging and a new praxis.”

Whatever language or praxis form this will take I venture say that it will not be one stumbled upon by an great intuition. By this I mean that what we take to be intuition is mostly an extrapolation of our previous experience, or an unconscious projection of our conditioned past into the future. (thats why it is so laughable that followers of the great yogi tend to dismiss reason in favor of worshiping at the alter of the Intuitive Mind or to quickly trade out of what they take to be the “old ways of thinking” for what they conceive of as the “new consciousness” )

The evolution of human prostheticity (technogenesis) is certainly not the coming of the Other that modernist writers such as Aurobindo, Bergson, James and others would have imagined a century ago.

So if the Future is the unpredictable Other, whatever this new embodied experimentation maybe by which we would best open ourselves to it’s coming, it will IMO not be given to us by any mysterious intuition, rather what history has so far demonstrated is that the new mode of this future being will certainly be “Counter-Intuitive”.